COGAT is a finger in the dike, but the best aid is a job -- see Maimonides Eight Levels of Charity -- and Israel has made provision for Palestinians to work, at least as long as they do not wage active war on the Jewish State. Post-Oslo Palestinian employment shows that warfare against Israel is the best predictor of Palestinian economic difficulty. The timeline, from an article I published in 2012 (with updates), includes: 1992: 115,600 Palestinian workers entered Israel every day. Each Palestinian worker is said to support 5-6 people at home. 1996: A devastating series of bus bombings, including a particularly gruesome nail bomb in the center of Tel Aviv, killed more than 100 Israelis. Palestinian workers in Israel were temporarily reduced to 63,000. Sept. 1995-Sept. 2002: Despite the interruption in 1996, Palestinian unemployment decreased from 18.2% to 11%. In mid-2000, 136,000 were working inside Israel -- 40% of all employed Palestinians. Another 5,000 worked in the joint Israeli/Arab run Erez Industrial Zone in the Gaza Strip. Thousands more worked in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in Israeli-owned businesses. Sept. 30, 2000: Arafat launched the so-called second intifada. Begun at the peak of Palestinian economic integration with Israel, the terrorist war killed more than 1,000 Israelis and wounded more than 5,600 (comparable U.S. figures would be 40,000 and 224,000). The number of Palestinians working in Israel was reduced within six months to 55,000. The Erez Industrial Zone was closed after 11 Israelis were killed there. 2005: There was no impediment to independent Palestinian economic activity at the time Israel removed its presence from the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian news agency Maan waxed ecstatic about economic opportunities, particularly the acquisition of greenhouses and agricultural equipment the Israelis were leaving behind in a $14-million deal brokered by then-World Bank President James Wolfensohn. 2006: Palestinian looters destroyed the greenhouses almost immediately, and by early 2006, the greenhouses and the $100 million in annual exports to Europe they had produced were gone. This was under the rule of Fatah -- Israels peace partner. 2007: Hamas took control of Gaza after a brief and brutal war with Fatah and then escalated the rocket war that had begun under Fatah in 2001. After more than 9,000 increasingly long-range and accurate rockets and missiles, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead in 2008/09. 2009: Israel and Egypt instituted the security blockade of Gaza; the UN has acknowledged the blockade to be a legitimate security measure. That year, the UN temporarily suspended aid to Hamas for stealing aid supplies. In 2013, after the 2012 Operation Pillar of Fire, the Palestinian news agency Maan reported more than 100,000 Palestinians were again working daily in Israel, with another 20,000 working in West Bank industries. gatestoneinstitute.org/4594/palestinian-poverty#
Posted on: Sat, 16 Aug 2014 10:48:37 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015